"Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a library
Line up to tha mind cemetery now
What we don't know keeps tha contracts alive an movin'
They don't gotta burn tha books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as tha cells
Rally round tha family, pockets full of shells"
Rage Against The Machine – "Bulls on Parade"
Disa couldn't believe how huge the Anhembi Sambadrome was as she sat packed in with tens of thousands of spectators. Sitting next to Erik, she could barely contain her enthusiasm. They hyped her up like a child who'd eaten too much candy.
The colors and organized movement were the most compelling thing to witness. The massive coordination of thousands of people for each samba school shined a light on what she had observed with Marisol at her practice. Disa had been woefully mistaken that the rehearsal she saw at the gym was the entire organization. That one trip at practice was simply one section working out choreography with their drum queen.
Marisol's family and a bunch of close friends shouted and clapped with joy, adding to Erik and Disa's excitement at being there to support her and have a good time. She had been confused about the organizations surrounding the schools until Erik explained to her before they arrived that they weren't really samba schools in the way she was thinking. In the old days, neighborhood samba clubs used schools to practice for carnival and often named their clubs after the actual schools they rehearsed in. Just like the Black Indians of New Orleans Mardi Gras, the people scrimped and saved money to make costumes, and floats, and represented their 'hoods to the fullest. Over the years, celebrities and outside entities helped finance the elaborate and often eerie-looking animatronic floats and special effects that now dominated the more spectacular additions to the parading schools. Erik donated money every year himself, although he had never paraded in one as a participant.
His parents took him to carnival when he was a young boy, but it had been a long time since he'd seen one and he wanted to be there for Marisol. She had her hand on his bicep when Marisol came into view, and their supporters in the stands lost it then. No one knew the theme or what to expect because Marisol had been very hush-hush. When they dressed her in her regalia, her bright eyes seemed to hold back something from them. They all knew why then.
It was an emotional viewing, and the wailing that rose up into the night sky quickly released the tension of the past. Marisol purposely faced their section of the bleachers and bowed to her family as her sleek, muscular legs moved fast, her hands floating around her like delicate wings. She looked like a goddess to Disa, so in control, with so much enthusiasm and stamina for days. Marisol kept shimmying and shaking her hips as her school made the slow crawl through the straight line of the arena. So many people. So many vibrant colors. There were women dancers clothed in the beautiful ball-like gowns of the olden days who spun around and raised their hands to the people. The huge float depicted Africans coming to Brazil, breaking chains, and creating a new people. There were dancers all around the structure who did capoeira, samba, and all other movements that only originated there. There were even young people dressed as protesters wearing signs on their chests that demanded freedom from the government's right-wing tyranny. Disa felt connected to the presentation because as a daughter of the diaspora, that was her people's story too.
The flags of Negra Lia waved boldly, and the samba school had to share their theme song for the year. An older man on a platform surrounded by drummers and huge speakers sang a tribute about his neighborhood and how powerful they had become because of fighters like Negra Lia and other Black women who held up the sky. It was all beautiful.
She glanced at Erik's face, and he seemed beholden like her. He didn't cry, just smiled, and took in the entire display of love for his family and their favela. Disa rested her head on his shoulder and he touched her face. There were no words she could say that could express how blessed she felt, but he touched her bottom lip with his thumb and kissed her.
Other schools made their way with slow, deliberate pacing. It ended with so much dancing and loud music that she honestly thought it could go on forever and she would've been okay with that. It took over an hour to finally catch up with Marisol once they left the arena to find her in the staging area. Up close, with all of her costume on, she was like an angel. Disa hugged her, and she cried when she saw her family. The pride was thick. Erik hugged her last for a long time. Marisol wilted in his arms and he whispered in her ear. She spoke to him and cried, and whatever she said made him hug her once more as if they had patched up their feud over Inácio.
A camera crew approached her and asked her to dance and she showed off with some drummers from her school. She became a true diva when that music hit. Dancing for hours made no difference. She was in her element.
The entire family returned to Andres and Mae's house and stayed together. They ate, slept overnight there, then had a big family breakfast to say goodbye to Erik one last time as a unit. The festive mood was what he needed. He would face a grueling test of his physical and mental capabilities with his BUDs training. Staying in Brazil charged up his batteries to sustain him.
Flying home to Cambridge was bittersweet. Erik only had a day to wash and pack up his main gear. Disa would ship the rest to California after loading up the storage unit she rented for their personal effects. She drove Erik to the airport so he could catch his flight to Illinois for his Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. Their goodbye was short and sweet as they promised each other it would be.
Disa immediately set to work packing and planning to ship Erik's motorcycle and car to San Diego. Weeks went by fast as she stayed on task, and when Spring bid its last farewell, she flew to San Diego and checked into an Airbnb.
Fortune smiled at her by having a man who provided for her. She didn't know how she would've pulled it off if she had to work and move everything all on her own at the same time. The Navy helped with some fees and handled the pickup of some of Erik's things and that was helpful.
Her first day staying at the cabana-style housing she rented near the beach was fun. She attempted to swim in the chilly waters of the Pacific, but eventually opted to snap photos in her bikini on the sand or posing near her temporary residence. Erik wrote her love letters again, and she wrote him back on scented paper with lipstick kisses from her favorite shades. Disa spent days sleeping, reading, and exploring the city. She caught a little tour bus in Balboa Park at the center of the city and could ride around all day on one fair, jumping on and off at tourist spots. She checked out Old Town San Diego, the Gaslamp District downtown, and rode across the Coronado Bay bridge to check out where they wanted to live on the manmade Coronado Island. There was even a chance to see where Erik would train to become a Navy SEAL. Disa spent a few hours walking around the area where mostly retired military lived. Coronado had expensive real estate and was mainly full of older white people. She took a tour of the old Hotel Del Coronado, where a ghost was supposed to have lived in one room, and then she hopped back on the tour bus to return to the park. A few days in, she took a trolley down to Tijuana, Mexico, and bought tequila bottles filled with worms for gifts and ate street tacos.
The beaches were her favorite places, and she drove Erik's car to La Jolla Shores, and sometimes Del Mar or Solana beach just outside of the city limit. An old professor called her and encouraged a visit to UCSD to visit his colleague who taught Urban Studies and Planning. Disa took a Wednesday afternoon to go back to La Jolla and wander around the UCSD campus. The university library looked like a secret spaceship and the student population was mainly white and Asian. A few Black students straggled by her in the campus food court. The visual atmosphere was laid back with an undercurrent of student stress. Finals week always did that to students everywhere. Her eyes were immediately attracted to a structure cantilevered at an odd angle over the top of the school of engineering building. It looked like a tiny house blown out of The Wizard of Oz that was ready to fall to the ground. She went up an elevator and took a chance to check it out. The strange structure happened to be an art installation called "Fallen Star" and was a small cottage purposely created to look like it was sliding over the edge of the main building. It made Disa almost throw up after entering, and she experienced dizziness from the slant and gravity that gave feelings of vertigo. It was cool and fun to look at for only a few minutes inside. The interior was decorated like a cute, cozy home, and it made her miss her own cozy home back east.
The meeting with the professor was an agreeable change of pace. She had lunch with the tanned, forty-ish professor with bright blonde hair streaked with gray. His name was Jeffrey, and they ate lunch at a campus cafeteria where he discussed her dissertation and was curious about her prospects. She had none at the moment other than the CVs and favors she pulled to get first dibs on teaching jobs. There were two offers of employment from design firms in Chicago and Florida, but she let those slide once she knew Erik had them covered financially without her being desperate for money. Both firms didn't fall in line with her philosophy on environmental protections, so it did not disappoint her to turn them down. Jeffery seemed genuinely interested in her ideas and gave her his card. He promised to keep his eyes and ears open for positions at UCSD or in the city. They ended their meet-up with Jeffrey inviting her out to dinner at his place with his wife. Disa accepted. It would be a way to make some San Diego connections and possibly new friends.
Her life was uneventful after that, and she grew used to living a southern California lifestyle again. San Diego was slower than L.A. and didn't have a large Black population. She visited a local mosque and a Baptist church, and made trips to Southeast San Diego to seek Black-owned food spots and see other Black people. Her mother had friends who lived in Bonita Hills, so there were trips there to hang out with a middle-aged couple. By the time Erik arrived back to start BUDs training, she knew San Diego and its outer city limits by heart.
Disa slept in her bed late into the night on a Thursday after a day spent rollerblading at Mission Beach. A sound in her bedroom startled her awake. Moonlight from the open window illuminated nothing, and she thought maybe she had dreamed something instead. She nearly shit her panties when Erik pounced on her in military fatigues.
"Fuck!" she hollered.
He laughed and hugged her tight.
"I took a red-eye in early to surprise you. You sleep like a rock," he said.
She couldn't stay mad for long and smothered his face with kisses. He reached over and turned on the bedroom light, and she took in his military ensemble. Still clean-shaven, his hair was cut into a uniform grunt style. Without hair, he was all lips, nose, and cheeks.
"Baby," she sighed, while stroking his face.
He kissed her slowly, lovingly, and pulled her in under his arms.
"I have a ton of food for us in the fridge, and your weekend clothes are all clean and put away. Your mail finally got forwarded, and Marisol sent you a package and so did your Aunt Serah—"
"Disa…"
"What?"
"Just let me look at you. I don't care about none of that other stuff right now."
She remained quiet as he looked her over with loving eyes. He placed his head against hers and squeezed her tight. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep, exhausted from his flight and the anticipation of being together. Disa let him sleep against her until he lost his hold on her. She placed a pillow under his head and rested her head on his chest.
###
Erik woke up before Disa did and cooked them a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes, bell peppers, and onions, along with scrambled eggs and link sausages. She showed him around the cabana apartment and they spent some time looking up condo rentals in Coronado.
They made slow love on the balcony. He had a thing for her wearing form-fitting dresses he could lift and let rest on the top of her ass cheeks as he bent her over and took her from behind. Something about seeing her clothing struggle to conceal her round bubble got him off quicker and more intensely. It turned her into the forbidden fruit. She made him wear his graduation uniform, and he fucked her with his dick slipped through the zipper opening of his slacks. He pretended he was a soldier who happened upon her waiting for her boyfriend and he talked so much dirty filth in her ear as he clapped her cheeks that she came fast. Their second session immediately after that one had him pulling his balls out while still having his military pants fastened at the top. The eroticism of role-playing kept her pussy tight, creamy wet, and satisfied. He filled up two condoms back-to-back. Erik made no apologies about cumming fast during their first hook-up. Disa just did that to him. He ached to bust, and the condom took all of his semen in a heavy bubble at the tip. He made sure round two was ultra-slow, and he kept his dick in her deep.
He slapped his dick against her folds both times, stimulating her clit with it too. Being intimate on his first day back calmed the jitters he fought to keep under control. They had the weekend to get acclimated as a couple once more before he faced his first day of BUDs on Monday. She was due for her period and he could tell that her latest cycle would be rough. She was already drinking special herbal teas and taking painkillers to offset fibroid pain.
The afternoon took them over to Coronado, where Disa showed him where he would report to at the Navy Amphib Base. She rented them rollerblades, and they skated around Coronado Beach. He impressed her with his skating abilities and held her hand as they took in the sights, sunshine, and fresh air. His woman appeared light and airy, so much different from the deeply academic entrenched persona she had back east. She skated backward in front of him and he held both her hands, guiding her. Disa's dark long hair blew around her face in the slight breeze and her smiles delighted his heart.
This is how life is supposed to be, he thought.
He was twenty-three, a soldier, and a soon-to-be-married man. Life was excellent.
They skated around the beach a few times before skating back into the business district of the island to return the skates. He treated her to a nice lunch at a café and they talked for two hours straight. She told him everything that was on her mind, and her excitement was contagious. They returned home to make love again. Erik kept her in his favorite position with her — missionary — and held up her legs over his arms so she could watch him stretch her out while he begged to cum in her pussy, even though he wore a condom. Disa's face scrunched up all sexy and her lips quivered as he worked deep inside her walls. They were completely naked, and his dominance over her pussy heightened her pleasure to the extreme.
"Lemme cum in this pussy, girl," he moaned.
She twisted her lips up, doing her darndest to keep an orgasm at bay, but she failed. Her pussy lips slid along his erection so tight that her vulva and clit gave up, contracting hard and pulling his release out fast. They both watched his dick pulse in her pussy. He stayed still so she could see his balls throb too, pushing out his cum until he was drained. He kissed her vulva all over and sucked on her clit to finish her for the day. She fell asleep soon after, and he took that time to open Marisol's package from Brazil.
He pulled out a bubble-wrapped item and unwrapped it in the bed right next to Disa and sighed when he saw what it was.
Ogum.
It was an artisan-created doll about six inches high. It wore a tall silver hat that brought out the midnight black of the doll's hand-stitched fabric skin. A green and yellow cape made from dried corn husks cut into long strings hung on his shoulders, with a long silver blade attached to his hand, ready to strike. He admired the silver breastplate that covered his chest with matching silver boots. A blue pair of billowy pants covered the legs, and there was a note attached to the cape.
"JaJa, Mae Olga made this for you. Ogum is the orixá of iron and technology. He is the future like you are. Take care of him and he will take care of you. Let him guide your stubborn head! Give Disa a hug and kiss from me. I miss you. Love, Marisol."
Erik carried the orixá to the living room and placed him on the windowsill. He wanted the spirit to protect Disa while he was on the base training to become a SEAL. The eyes of the doll faced Coronado Bay. Ogum would watch over him, too. Warrior to warrior, they would survive the next twenty-four weeks.
###
"Move it! Move it! Now, soldier!"
Erik ran blindly in the five-a.m. darkness, disoriented, amped, and full of uncontrollable adrenaline. He started his Illinois pre-training program with 118 classmates. Only eighty-eight remained once they started their first day on the Coronado base.
Several SEAL instructors screamed, shouted, insulted, and cajoled eighty-eight men who thought they were up to the challenge of becoming an elite soldier. Everyone tried to obey the impatient instructors, but getting slammed in several directions all at once by several men was exhausting.
They ran to line up and numbered off quickly before being yelled at again.
Erik focused on hearing the voice of a belligerent white man with the pitch of a whiny bitch. He already marked the man, who called himself Instructor Mad Max, as a future pain in his ass, and Erik's goal was simple on the first day: do not let any of the instructors learn his name right away. If they did, that meant he was fucking up and they were watching him. If they were watching him, then the other classmates would watch him and mark him as the weak link. The key was to not stand out at all in any negative way.
"Hit the ground. Give us two sets of fifty! Now!"
Erik jumped down into push-ups and an instructor walked through rows of grunting men, hosing them down with cold water. The psychological games were trying to break them. He noticed a large shiny bell hanging near them. At any time, they could quit, ring the bell, and leave their helmets on the ground, signifying that they had enough. Erik would never meet that bell close up. Ever.
Ice cold water sprayed all over his face. Mad Max was on his ass. The man hadn't liked the way Erik mad-dogged him when he set eyes on him for the first time. Five seconds after being in his presence and hearing his voice, Erik knew Mad Max thrived on breaking men and loved being a lifelong soldier.
Erik closed his eyes and took the hosing, but he kept right on doing push-ups. Cold air, cold water, and a cold reception had him hyper-focused. He jumped up when he was ordered to. Chief Baylor, a cold-eyed white man with heavy muscles, paced up and down, looking at all of them. His eyes dusted over Erik's as another instructor sprayed water on him as he stood at attention. As they continued with other PT exercises, he knew the group was falling apart already. Even the instructors observing could tell they were a joke. None of their work was perfect and the frustration in everyone hung in a dark cloud around them.
Pull-ups, stomach crunches, and speed runs back and forth only granted them curses and surly glares from the instructors. They didn't let up for over an hour and Erik sensed that there were many men around him questioning why they were there. He dug in then, concentrating on his orixá and the long game. Becoming a SEAL got him into Special Ops. Special Ops got him closer to being a ghost soldier. Once he was there, he could feel comfortable enough putting out feelers for the one true ghost he was after. Ulysses Klaue.
Working up the chain, he could slip into Black Ops and then disappear off the grid. Once he did that, the road to Wakanda was imminent. That road started with him holding on to the goddamn pull-up bar as freezing water tried to force him to lose his grip. Aggravating. The burning in his biceps and wrists made him grimace. He groaned trying to do one more lift of his body before his arms gave out and he fell. His muscles ached, and they hadn't even really started yet. Not by a long shot. They put extra pressure on soldiers who weren't cutting it or trying to be slick with doing the least amount of work. Instructors swooped in on those jokers and it helped to keep eyes off of other soldiers who were terrified of being singled out. Their trials and tribulations came down to teamwork. The individual was the enemy.
The dip station wrecked his arms and Erik breathed through his pain.
"C'mon stud boy, get on up there!"
Instructor DeMarco, a fat-necked brute, breathed fire down Erik's back as he shouted more names at him. His arms spasmed, but he pushed himself up and held steady. Eventually, he slipped from the sweat pouring out of him.
"Do whatever you have to do stud boy! Scream if you want! Shout out for your Mama too! But you get up there!"
"Arrghhhh!" Erik roared.
"Keep going, keep going! Keep pushing!"
A classmate right next to Erik was in distress. DeMarco kept on bellowing at Erik, but he turned to his team member and shouted, "You got this, man!"
His classmate, a well-built Vietnamese named Pham, grit his teeth and shook with muscles ready to fail him.
"Dassit, bruh… you got this!" Erik barked.
The focus on another person gave Erik the energy to keep going himself. Pham exhaled hard and cords strained his neck as he pushed on.
No one dropped out after the first or second hour.
The grinder, the nickname for the exercise area, was chaotic masculine pain. Dawn broke, and for the first time since starting, Erik and the instructors could fully see one another. They were given a thirty-minute break for breakfast and walked into the cafeteria chowline, famished. Erik picked out oatmeal and toast with several pieces of bacon and sausage. He tucked in to eat and concentrated on filling his stomach with food to convert into energy he needed for the next tasks. Other men sat around running their mouths and complaining about certain parts of the PT. Pham sat next to him after going up for seconds on food.
"Thanks for the encouragement," Pham said.
"No prob. Teamwork makes the dream work, bruh," Erik said.
Erik took a quick piss after he ate and when they returned to muster for the next phase of their day, there were two men missing from the roll call numbers. The drop on request didn't surprise Erik. A lot of dudes at breakfast looked shell-shocked. The age range for SEAL training was seventeen to twenty-eight, and the maturity level and skill-sets covered that range too. Their youngest classmate was twenty. For once in his life, Erik wasn't the youngest person.
There was no time to figure out who left, they were hustled over to their next evolution. A timed four-mile run.
"If sixty percent of you can't make it through this run and fail, you won't make it through Hell Week…"
The sound of the surf pounded behind their backs as they kneeled in the sand, facing their instructors. The scent of seawater tickled his nostrils. He imagined Disa running around on the far side of Coronado Beach, not too far from where he knelt, in her red bikini, kicking up sand and dipping her painted toes in the foamy dark water. Erik flexed his neck and listened until it was time to line up and make his legs work.
"Failure for most of you is a given during Hell Week. It is your destiny. The statistics prove this. Right now, you need to focus on this run. Those of you who pass will have a small window of rest. The rest of you who fail… we might just beat you… "
Some of the other instructors grinned at the comment. Most glared at the men and expected the statistics to ring true.
Erik pulled off his white shirt. His chest muscles glistened with sweat. They each had thirty minutes or less to get through the four miles. Anything over that time was failure to pass. That meant running over the uneven sand and giant clumps of dried seaweed swarming with flies and praying not to be the caboose.
DeMarco approached Erik.
"You need to lead from the front. There are a lot of E1s and E2s here who will follow your lead. We hold our officers to a higher standard. I need you to be less standoffish and more team-oriented like you were this morning. I saw you encouraging Pham. We want to see more of that."
"Yes, sir," Erik said.
Damn. They had eyes on the back of their head. He would have to be "on" at all times. Even while eating.
Erik led the pack by staying ahead of everyone else during the first two miles of the run before he sat in the cut of third position among all the men. He didn't want to wear himself out too much before the next evolution, but he didn't want to receive more attention beating everyone outright. He broke his personal running record on the four-mile. A sweet twenty-four minutes glided him through.
Surf passage was next on the agenda, and Erik was glad he was in a summer class. The ocean temperature was sixty-three degrees, and the waves were growing sizeable. A winter class would've been horrible in colder weather. The Pacific Ocean was unforgiving. Nervous eyes gaged the difficulty of running into the water with a boat crew carrying a ten-foot rubber raft and breaking past the waves.
Erik grew up with beach life, but there were many men staring at the ocean who had never seen waves that big before up close. There was a giddy energy among them, for the task appeared to look fun since they were racing one another. But the harsh PT earlier would catch up to them, along with the cold water and crashing waves. He tightened his orange life vest. Boat Team nine was his crew, and he gave his team of six other men last-minute instructions. Each man had a swim buddy, and they listened to their instructors explain what dangers could await them if they didn't work as a team. They placed their oars inside the raft and lifted the entire thing to test the weight.
The signal was given to race, and Erik yelled for his crew to move as a unified front. They lifted the raft and ran into the water until it reached their knees. There were three men on each side of the raft, with Erik taking the seventh rear middle spot.
"Jump in!" he shouted.
In unison, they were able to hop into the raft as the first small wave lifted the front. Scrambling for paddles, they slid over the next bigger wave until a water surge pushed back with enough force to flip their raft over. Paddling in high surf was dangerous, and even more so with paddles and bodies flying around. Just about every raft crew got tossed on their heads. The water forced a shriek from Erik and the others once the gripping cold seeped throughout their clothes. Gulping salty water and spitting it out, he barked orders for crew team nine to grab the raft and their floating oars. All the men hopped back in, but white water grabbed a hold of the raft and shoved them back to shore. They had to jump out and start again. The only good thing in their favor was that all the other crews were experiencing the same struggle.
Drenched in water, shivering, and full of frustration, crew team nine staggered to start again. They made progress the second time by getting past two waves, but two team members were tossed out of the raft as a wall of water smacked them on the side, tilting it and dumping the soldiers out. Three other men dodged flying oars, but two weren't so lucky and felt the brunt of the wet, hard projectiles. There would be knots rising on a few heads.
Erik spat water and lifted their raft from his end and they carried on. The waves grew in height and their frustrations grew even higher. His body took a serious beating, and he questioned whether he could continue at that pace for the rest of the day. A soldier's boot accidentally connected with his jaw and Erik tumbled out of the raft into a swirling mass of dark water. He tasted blood in his mouth.
Boat crew seven won the race and could rest onshore once their group's competition ended for a moment. They sat on the wet sand while the losers were made to carry their rafts overhead and run across the beach sand as punishment. The shaky aches in his joints and muscles angered Erik as he lifted the raft high above his head. His team ran to join the other losers who stood side-by-side holding rafts up while new winners gasped and rested limbs sitting near their rafts on the sand.
Crew team nine came in sixth place overall. That wasn't good enough. It placed them smack dab in the middle of mediocrity. Erik darted his eyes over to the team next to him. Pham was in that lineup, and the man had tears in his eyes from the pain in his body. Other men did too. Their bodies sought release and the silent tears from red eyes were mixed in with the saltwater dripping off their faces. A new race commenced. And another. And another. Crew team nine didn't win one of them and standing in the loser line holding a raft up high angered him more.
"You guys need to stop being scared and push through! Every time we go out, one of you bitches out because you're afraid of getting smacked in the face. What if we were out on a mission in real life? Are you gonna stand there and wimp out because of some waves? It's daylight in Southern California. We're on a goddamn beach playing with rafts. I expect y'all to move your asses the next time we go out!"
Erik's throat was raw from seawater and disappointment.
Their final race created doubt in his mind. Doubt was the mind-killer. He shook off the gnawing feeling of imminent failure. Erik had a woman on the other side of the base who was counting on him to succeed. He snatched her away from an already successful man thriving in Australia and she uprooted her life just on potential. Failure was not an option.
His men got past the waves and slid over a high tube, digging deep into the water with their oars once they were on the other side of a large wave. In the lead, they rejoiced and paddled harder to pass up crew team twelve. A rogue wave slammed another raft into theirs and flipped them over as they raced back to shore. One of his teammates, Guzman, screamed and once they all made it back to the surface, Guzman waved his hand.
"I rolled my ankle!" he yelled.
Guzman was Erik's swim buddy, so he swam to his aid and lifted him onto his good foot. They hobbled back to shore.
"My leg went in between the cross tubing and got caught. We did good, though!" Guzman huffed.
The man grimaced with pain, and Erik tried to appear confident. The thing they all feared was injury. If it was something he could shake off in an hour, all was well. But if he was seriously injured or broke his ankle, he would be cut. If he were fortunate, he could roll into another class at the next opening, but if not, that meant he had to start all over from scratch.
"Can you put your weight on it?" Erik asked.
Guzman tried and limped once they reached dry land. Medics took over then, and Erik jogged back over to his team. They snagged second place. But second place was just the first loser. Crew team nine lifted their raft and took their punishment, while the winning crew took a one-minute recovery respite.
All around them, instructors screamed at losing teams. One soldier was singled out for being a weak link on his boat crew. Erik watched him do push-ups with his feet resting on the raft and his face close to the hot sand. He sighed as the soldier, Olsen, grunted and groaned, trying to work sore muscles. Olsen was the same soldier who won the four-mile run earlier. A man could beat others in one field and flounder like a despised hack in another. The same instructors who praised him for having wings on his feet were the same ones calling him every name but a child of God at that moment. It was a topsy-turvy world.
Hundreds of push-ups later, stressful timed runs, and facing thirteen-foot waves, they were given a lunch break. Famished beyond belief, soldiers ate, drank, and rested their bodies instead of chatting the way they did at breakfast. The world they signed up for was sinking in. Erik saw it in all the eyes he scanned around the cafeteria. Guzman limped his way after eating.
"All good?" Erik asked.
"I took some painkillers. Nothing is broken, so I'm pushing through," Guzman said.
Erik nodded. He took a moment to himself to stretch and close his eyes for all of three minutes before he headed to his quarters for class inspection. He changed into a dry uniform and placed his helmet on his head, meeting his classmates outside to stand in formation.
Instructors walked up and down the lines, physically looking them over. Many of the Asian soldiers had their names mispronounced on purpose to get a reaction out of them. They accused the few Black soldiers there of not being properly dressed or presentable. White soldiers with non-Protestant Christian names were teased with benign white ethnic jabs. Most men there were pressured to break, to test their limits when faced with overt bullying. Constant pressure was placed on them to make attempts at diamond making out of rough coal samplings. Erik didn't like it, but he endured. Especially when he was given the moniker stud boy because of the way he carried himself. His return from Brazil had him moving like a cunning panther. He had embraced his father's relaxed cool in all things. Truth be told, he already had that about him, but now it was more overt than ever. It was a prowess that the instructors and classmates picked up on readily.
Seventy percent of them there wouldn't graduate.
That fact clung to their thoughts as they waited to pass inspection.
"Those boots are terrible, Stevens. Drop and give me twenty."
Mad Max stood close enough for Erik to smell the ham sandwich he had for lunch. Erik knew for a fact that his boots were pristine, but the instructor wanted to push his buttons and see if he would break. He dropped and started counting off.
"Did I say I wanted you to count off?"
"No, sir!"
"Start over."
Other soldiers dropped around him. Officers and enlisted men. Erik assumed he was being used as an example that college-educated officers could get called out too for poor performance. He fumed inside, wondering how many more times he'd have to deal with petty bullshit.
"Pham-tastic, step over here."
Erik watched Pham quickly jump forward. DeMarco looked over his boots.
"Simpson, step forward."
A big country boy from Iowa jumped next to Pham. DeMarco compared their boots and scolded Simpson for not shining his.
"Good job, Pham-tastic," DeMarco said.
Little head games kept them all on edge. No matter how well they thought they were doing, instructors found something to pick out as unacceptable for a SEAL. Attention to detail was everything. Simpson dropped down to do twenty right next to Pham who stayed at attention. Ten minutes later, they were dismissed to their quarters for room inspection. Erik and his roommates had arrived the night before on Sunday to clean up their spaces prior to their first day of training. His obsessive need to be neat and orderly paid off for himself and his roommates. While other classmates had their clothes and belongings tossed because of an imperceptible rumpled bed cover or traces of beach sand in a corner that no one could see, Erik and his sleep unit stood alert and took advantage of resting instead of redoing their room. His roommates thought he was an asshole for making them spend four hours going over every inch of the room. They shifted their opinions immediately. Attention to detail was of grave importance. Training the mind to do more than just pay attention was critical. Anticipating how an enemy would move was crucial. Their lives out in the field depended on it.
The inspection ended, and it was back to more fucking pushups for those who failed. Erik and the other soldiers who passed were allowed to post up and chill by standing and watching the others. First inspection taught everyone an important lesson. Keep your shit tight.
The last two hours of Day One consisted of lifting and running with giant telephone poles.
Erik felt the stress of constant PT wearing on his confidence in the later part of the day. His boat team was his crew again. They had to hold the weight of 150 pounds above their heads, and also roll it shoulder to shoulder in a fluid motion. 150 pounds was nothing… until carrying it for a long time, running with it, and keeping it above their heads wore on the arms. There was a cut pole that was known as Ole Misery, a 450-pound log everyone despised. When his boat team had to lift it, the cracks of weakness showed in his crew. Some men weren't putting out, barely pushing up the weight to sneak in rest for their muscles. Erik was yelled at for not providing adequate leadership, and it pissed him off to have to carry the load of weaker men. A member of his team fell onto the sand. He dislocated his shoulder. An instructor led him to the medics and his team picked up the slack of Ole Misery. The log started tilting up from where Erik was in the back. DeMarco caught it and rushed them.
"Why is this log not up in the air?" he shouted at a low-built soldier with a wide back. MacLaughlin.
"We're missing a teammate, Sir!" MacLaughlin shouted with sweat dripping down his face.
"Don't give me that excuse, soldier! If you were leading a raid to save civilians and you lost one man, would you stop and tell the civs, 'Sorry, can't help you. Lost a man." Huh? Would ya?"
"No, sir!"
"Then put your big boy panties on and lift that log!"
"Sir! Yes, sir!"
DeMarco glanced back at Erik as if to remind him of his job as an officer in the bunch. Step up. Lead."
"Spread out!" Erik yelled. "Guzman and MacLaughlin, switch places… easy… lift! Lock those arms. Push through that pain!"
Dinner break couldn't come fast enough.
Erik ate with his boat crew, all single men with desires to excel. Men with families could go home at the end of the day. He preferred to stay on base all week. Disa would riddle him with questions about his day, then he'd probably eat something fantastic she cooked, have sex, and not want to get up early to come back. A quick phone call to her was enough, and she heard the exhaustion in his voice and gave encouraging words. She was bundled up in bed with cramps and gobbling painkillers. It was just as well to stay away from one another with two hurting bodies.
He fell asleep quickly when his head touched his pillow that night. Day one was a success.
###
Day two was more of the same as day one in the morning. PT in the grinder, paddling in the surf and scarfing down MREs on the beach for lunch. In the afternoon, they switched out fatigues for swim trunks. Fifty-meter underwater swimming was the call of the day, and Erik witnessed several classmates suffer from not growing up swimming. All they had to do was jump in, front flip, and swim underwater. Eighty-degree pool water temperature was a welcome change from sixty-degree beach water, but holding breath the entire time challenged many. Erik breezed through it.
Instructors wearing wetsuits and goggles stood at the edge of the Olympic-sized pool and watched for swimmers in distress. Some men got halfway across and lost lung capacity, flailing their bodies and having to be helped to the surface and out of the pool. Four soldiers had to be rescued like that and placed on their backs from passing out. Most of them had only been holding their breath for about forty seconds, but fear and reflexes kicked in, causing them to panic.
Two weeks flew by and the regiments, running, swimming, surviving the obstacle course on land, elephant walking with the rafts on their heads, and learning how to mesh as a connected team, molded their bodies and endurance. They were made to link arms and sit in the surf, letting ocean water crash over them. The pounding of the sea, trying to breathe and not release a teammate's arm while not drowning, took a toll. Twelve more men rang the bell three times each, leaving their helmets lined up on the ground, and dropped out on request with no questions asked. Pham, Guzman, and MacLaughlin were among the quitters. The closer they got to Hell Week, the more men they would lose. The chaff was being cut from the wheat at a steady pace. Erik didn't get attached to people. He focused on each classmate as a faceless soldier and didn't get emotional about losing a teammate or a roommate. Each day was a test to make it from sunup to sundown. For every mistake the men made that pissed the instructors off, they had to head back into the surf linked and sit down. They suffered the raging Pacific smacking them in the face with stinging salt sprays of hard water.
The only thing that kept Erik together was knowing that he was going home for the weekend to spend time with Disa before Hell Week began. Two weeks was enough to settle him at the base. He needed his woman to rub his back with tiger balm and spoil him with good loving and non-military food.
After a hard day of pool work, the men had to do surf paddling at night. The difficulty of a regular daytime jaunt was exacerbated by darkness. They had to learn it. Many missions took place under the cover of darkness. The men were stronger, better conditioned, and more alert. No one wanted to fuck up and be cast out on their own, or by injury in the pitch black.
Erik survived with his crew, and by the miracle of all miracles, his team beat out the other boat crews. The men were probably fearful of getting Erik's temper up. He talked mad shit to his classmates in the dark, daring them to fuck up on his watch. It made them key into important details as they struggled to function in freezing air and water.
The Friday he was to check out for the weekend, their class had to swim a mile in the Bay. The weather had turned to crap, gray, drizzly, and not friendly at all. The water was fifty-three degrees and all the men were worried about hypothermia and cramps. The Bay water was choppy and so was the boat ride into the middle of morose liquid.
Erik did well the first quarter-mile, but without a wetsuit, the cold water messed with his muscles and he fought a cramp in his left leg. It was the last evolution of the day, and he kept talking to himself about what he would eat once he returned to the new condo they rented ten minutes away from the base. Mind over matter was the mantra for everyone. His swim partner was a cool ass San Diego native named Walters who grew up near the Tijuana border in San Ysidro. He was the only classmate that Erik even took a proactive liking to, and it was probably because they were both Black California natives. Water sluiced over them, but the cold slowed them both down considerably.
"You sure it's cool I come over tomorrow?" Walters asked, trying to keep them both active by setting their minds on other things to keep their limbs going.
"Yeah, Disa said it was okay. She wants to meet some of the guys I'm with. We'll barbecue and cool out. Chop it up about Hell Week and whatnot."
"Coo, coo. Appreciate it."
Erik grimaced. The cramp had spread.
"Relax into it, mayne… mind over matter—"
"If the body don't mind…"
"It don't matter!" Walters finished for him.
Up ahead of them, another swim team flagged down one of the instructor boats that floated around watching them. There were medical emergency boats, too.
"Ah shit, I think Hollowell is packing it in," Walters said.
Two instructors lifted Hollowell's limp body onto the boat.
"He's down bad," Erik noted.
Seeing another classmate possibly throw in the towel made Erik perk up and swim through the discomfort. He and Walters ended their evolution and were now days away from Hell Week and the ultimate test of stamina.
Back on land, the weather cleared up enough to let the sun sneak out and make up for the shitty overcast day. Erik breathed in deep and thanked Bast and his orixá for getting him through. Four shiny black SUVs with diplomatic plates pulled onto the beach as the men stood in formation for a final muster before they were free. Visiting dignitaries from the U.S. government and the U.N.'s new council of international diplomacy stepped out of the vehicles with Navy Amphib Base security. Erik's body tightened and his eyes narrowed.
"You alright, Stevens?" Walters whispered.
King T'Chaka Udaku glided out of an SUV last and gazed at all the class with deceptively gentle eyes. Erik fought the overpowering urge to break out of the line and rush his uncle. The heat from his body raged in his blood. He clenched his jaw as the dignitaries stood in the distance watching them with a military liaison explaining who they were.
Blood pounded in his ears, and he could taste iron on his tongue. Before he could react further and lose his shit completely, the dignitaries were whisked away. Erik's cramped leg gave out, and he fell to the ground. Clutching sand with his fingers, his hands shook.
T'Chaka was in San Diego.
But for how long?
